Key Arguments

• He interprets "Let the waters produce reptiles of living souls" as God working through the deeds of the holy in the midst of worldly temptations to spread baptismal faith: "Let the sea also conceive and bring forth your works. ‘Let the waters produce reptiles of living souls’ (Gen. 1: 20). As you separate the precious from the vile, you become the mouth of God (Jer. 15: 19) saying: ‘Let the waters produce not the living soul which the earth will produce, but reptiles of living souls and flying creatures flying over the earth.’ Through the works of your holy people, God, your mysteries have crept through the midst of the waters of the world’s temptations to imbue the nations with your name through your baptism."
• He associates ‘great sea monsters’ and ‘flying’ voices with miracles and preaching operating under scriptural authority: "And in the meanwhile great and wonderful things (Ps. 105: 21–2) have been made like vast sea monsters, and the voices of your messengers flying above the earth close to the firmament of your book; for this is the authority under which they have to fly, wherever they may go."
• He distinguishes the fixed, eternal truths in the firmament from their many bodily embodiments below, which grow and multiply while the truths remain one: "There are things of which the knowledge is fixed and determined without evolving with the generations, such as the lights of wisdom and knowledge. But while the truths of these things remain the same, their embodiments in the physical realm are both many and varied. One thing grows out of another, and so, by your blessing, God, things are multiplied."
• He says these sensory signs are produced ‘by the waters’ through God’s word to meet the needs of people estranged from truth, whose ‘morbid bitterness’ necessitated them: "‘The waters have produced’ (Gen. 1: 20) these signs, but only through your word.23 These physical things have been produced to meet the needs of peoples estranged from your eternal truth, but only in your gospel; for they were the product of the very waters whose morbid bitterness was the reason why, through your word, those signs emerged.24"
• He links the need for these sacramental, sensory mediations directly to Adam’s fall and the ‘salty sea‑water’ of the human race; had Adam not fallen, such actions and words would not have been necessary: "If Adam had not fallen from you,25 there would not have flowed from his loins that salty sea-water the human race—deeply inquisitive, like a sea in a stormy swell, restlessly unstable. Then there would have been no need for your ministers at work ‘in many waters’ (Cant. 8: 7) to resort to mystic actions and words in the realm of the bodily senses. That is the interpretation I now give to reptiles and birds;"

Source Quotes

78: 10). xx (26) Let the sea also conceive and bring forth your works. ‘Let the waters produce reptiles of living souls’ (Gen. 1: 20). As you separate the precious from the vile, you become the mouth of God (Jer.

15: 19) saying: ‘Let the waters produce not the living soul which the earth will produce, but reptiles of living souls and flying creatures flying over the earth.’ Through the works of your holy people, God, your mysteries have crept through the midst of the waters of the world’s temptations to imbue the nations with your name through your baptism. And in the meanwhile great and wonderful things (Ps.

And in the meanwhile great and wonderful things (Ps. 105: 21–2) have been made like vast sea monsters, and the voices of your messengers flying above the earth close to the firmament of your book; for this is the authority under which they have to fly, wherever they may go. For there are neither languages nor discourses in which their voices are not heard.

(27) Surely I do not mislead my readers?22 Surely I am not confusing things and failing to distinguish between the clear know-ledge of these truths in the firmament of heaven and the bodily works done below in the waves of the sea and under the firmament of heaven? There are things of which the knowledge is fixed and determined without evolving with the generations, such as the lights of wisdom and knowledge. But while the truths of these things remain the same, their embodiments in the physical realm are both many and varied. One thing grows out of another, and so, by your blessing, God, things are multiplied.

If Adam had not fallen from you,25 there would not have flowed from his loins that salty sea-water the human race—deeply inquisitive, like a sea in a stormy swell, restlessly unstable. Then there would have been no need for your ministers at work ‘in many waters’ (Cant. 8: 7) to resort to mystic actions and words in the realm of the bodily senses. That is the interpretation I now give to reptiles and birds; for human beings after instruction, initiation, and subjection to corporeal sacraments do not make further progress unless in the spiritual realm their soul comes to live on another level and, subsequent to the words of initiation, looks towards their perfection (Heb. 6: 1). xxi (29) Moreover, it was not the deep sea but the land separated out from the bitter waters which produced, not the ‘reptiles of living souls and birds’, but ‘a living soul’ (Gen.

Key Concepts

• ‘Let the waters produce reptiles of living souls’ (Gen. 1: 20).
• Through the works of your holy people, God, your mysteries have crept through the midst of the waters of the world’s temptations to imbue the nations with your name through your baptism.
• the voices of your messengers flying above the earth close to the firmament of your book; for this is the authority under which they have to fly, wherever they may go.
• There are things of which the knowledge is fixed and determined without evolving with the generations, such as the lights of wisdom and knowledge. But while the truths of these things remain the same, their embodiments in the physical realm are both many and varied.
• Then there would have been no need for your ministers at work ‘in many waters’ (Cant. 8: 7) to resort to mystic actions and words in the realm of the bodily senses. That is the interpretation I now give to reptiles and birds;

Context

Book XIII, xx (26–28): In his allegory of the fifth day, Augustine explains reptiles and birds as sacramental and symbolic works in the bodily realm—especially preaching and rituals—needed because of human fallenness, operating under the firmament of Scripture to carry the gospel into the ‘waters’ of the world.